


this space

by SubbyP



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Canon-Typical Injuries, D/s AU, Established Relationship, Inspired by Fanfiction, M/M, Other, POV Multiple, all consent all the time, as per usual, lars is a douchebag, no actual sex! lots of characterization!, raleigh has opinions, that's me the one who elaborates on other people's ideas
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-10
Updated: 2018-07-10
Packaged: 2019-06-08 11:31:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15242448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SubbyP/pseuds/SubbyP
Summary: They used to say that you need dynamic to pilot a Jaeger.





	1. Raleigh

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Safety in the Storm](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8366689) by [AgentMalkere](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AgentMalkere/pseuds/AgentMalkere). 



       Even a non-dynamic like Raleigh doesn’t need to see the band around Newt’s wrist to tell he’s a switch. The guy is basically five and change of Needs Balance, Desperately in skinny jeans. How in the hell a buttoned-up Oxford Dom like Gottlieb can share lab space with that guy is really a mystery, or so Raleigh thought.

       “Herms? Nah, deep down he’s a sweetie.” Newt taps his skinny tie, grinning. “And I’m guessing he can stand me, cause, y’know, he put this on me and shit.”

       Oh. Well, now Raleigh just feels like an idiot.

       “To be fair,” Mako says, smiling wryly, “who ever heard of a necktie as a collar?”

       Newt puffs himself up, clearly preparing to go into a well-worn spiel,  _dammit Mako do you do anything in this life but trolling Raleigh._ “Oh you’re telling me? He was all like” (and here he launched into what was presumably an impression of Dr. Gottlieb but sounded more like Jeremy Brett trying to play Sherlock Holmes while drunk and with a broomstick shoved up his ass) “’ _Newton_ , there is a  _war on,_ I can’t  _pohsiblehy_  get you something suitable with trade being what it is right now’, and I was all ‘Dude, I don’t  _care,_  as long as it’s from you I’ll wear like a candy necklace or one of your  _socks_  or some shit,’ and he gets all, ‘I won’t have it, Newton, I won’t give you anything but the best, you’re mine after all’, and I was like, ‘aw babe’ and he goes ‘take one of my neckties for now, at least it’ll make you look professional for a change,’ so yeah.”

_How did you say all of that without breathing?_  thinks Raleigh.

–

       They used to say no-dys can’t pilot Jaegar, that you need dynamic to establish neural handshake. That was proved to be nonsense pretty quickly (thanks in part, ironically enough, to Raleigh and Yancy, who also proved that a sub could take point), and they amended it sheepishly to no-dys not being able to pilot with people who aren’t their family members. But Raleigh, no-dy as he is, is it when it comes to the Mark IIIs, and so here he is standing on the practice mat, ready to do the impossible again.

       There’s a clump of cocky–read: _boring_ –Doms at the edge of the mat, waiting to take on the no-dy who thinks he’s hot shit. Mako’s standing out at the edge of the room, shoes irritatingly on like she didn’t feel their compatibility. They say that one of the reasons no-dys can’t Drift with nonrelatives is that you need dynamic just to feel compatibility in the first place, but as soon as Raleigh heard Mako speak he knew that was bullshit. Whatever Mako is–and Raleigh has never been good at getting a read on that sort of thing–she is his drift partner, and all of these guys with their flinty eyes and good test scores are just wasting everyone’s time.

       Raleigh basically says as much. “The theory,” says Mako, who has the good grace to look kind of ashamed of herself, “is that the strongest Doms would have the best chance of…establishing….”

       UGH. So Raleigh takes it as a point of personal pride to burn through these guys like they’re flash paper, and when they’re scattered at his feet he turns to her and Pentecost again. They know she’s it, too, no matter how hard the Marshall tries to keep it from happening. 

       Raleigh won’t remember, later, what he says to make it happen, but suddenly Mako is toeing off her boots and picking up a staff. The Marshall is giving him  the highly professional military stinkeye, but that doesn’t really matter because everything about this is  _right_  and  _clear_  in a way they say no-dys can never feel, and frankly they should  _shut the hell up_  because Raleigh never needs to feel more certain than this.


	2. Hermann

       “You are  _not,_ ” Hermann says, for the seventy-third time and as if it’ll make a damn bit of difference, “drifting with a Kaiju.”

       “Every time you try to Dom Voice me out of it, you just put another brick in my Fortress of Being Right About This, just so you know,” says Newton, who is clearly trying to make Hermann have a stroke and predecease him. “You can’t talk me out of this, dude, we agreed my career is my business, and so, by the way, is my brain, so unless you want to stroll your happy ass over here and give me a force down—which! you’re a better person than that—I am riding the drift bus to Kaijubrainpiecetown.”

       He’s right, damn him. Not about the kaiju brain drift, he’s completely wrong about that, but he’s right that Hermann would never put his hand on Newton’s soft spot in anger, not even to save his life. Each scrap of autonomy that Newton has dragged out of his roiling vat of complex trauma is beyond price. Hermann is the one to blame, for being unable to strike a balance between his beloved Newton and Dr. Geiszler, Ph.D (Professional Headache Distributor). What kind of a Dom is he, that he can’t light Newton’s path, but only react with fruitless, bitter worry-born anger?

       “You’ll  _die,_  Newton!  The neural load–You’re going to  _kill yourself!”_

       “ _Or,_ ” says Newton–and this is the moment when Hermann realizes he has truly failed to give Newton a tether to life, to show him that he is valuable and treasured and brilliant and can aspire to be something other than a beloved corpse with regretful pallbearers– “I’ll be a rock star.”

–

       Hermann was never outright given specifications for the kind of sub he was expected to have. Lars believed that if his children were not clever enough to deduce what was going on in his head at any given time, then they deserved the penalties of failure. 

       Still, the requirements were clear enough. Hermann and Karla (who was close enough to a Domme to count) were expected to select subs that were sophisticated; quiet; preferably of a sex (and an orientation) that could give them children; exclusively submissive ( _”As long as you live under my roof, Karla, you will not celebrate the switch’s pathology. Take those armbands off this instant”_ ); intelligent enough to not be bewildered by their Doms’ Gottlieb-given brains or embarrass themselves at dinner parties, but not intelligent enough not to be argued out of their own opinions; cultured; tractable, trainable and obedient; seamlessly compliant both in public and at home; and, above all,  _not embarrassing._

       After all that, it was inevitable that Hermann would end up with a loud, willful, brilliant, somewhat immature, regularly embarrassing, manically queer asexual male switch with enough tattoos and trauma to make up several punk bands and who hadn’t given up on an opinion since primary school.

       Karla was obstinately single, and Bastien had been given up as a bad job long ago when he got his doctorate ( _”A sub with a doctorate is like a duck with a limousine. He doesn’t deserve it, he probably didn’t earn it, and he certainly doesn’t know how to use it”_ ), so it was Hermann who got all the snippy e-mails and invitations addressed to  _Dr. Hermann Gottlieb and guest_. Newton was written off as a Bad Influence, and referred to, on the very rare occasion it was necessary to do so at all, as “your boy.” It was Newton’s fault that Hermann didn’t come home for the holidays anymore. It was Newton’s fault that Hermann had refused to turn his back on his own life’s work and sign on with the Wall of Life. None of this was actually letting Hermann off the hook–Newton was not his own person, just a yappy dog or some kind of garish tumor, and it was Hermann’s job to  _deal with him and stop being an embarrassment._

       Hermann neatly resolved the  _embarrassment_  problem by refusing to communicate with his father in any way. “Don’t give a fuck about whatever anyone thinks of you, babe,” Newton had said, watching Hermann consign the latest round of recriminations to the PPDC shredder. “You’re a badass and nobody’s ignorant opinion can change that.”

       Newton was always terrible at following his own advice.

–

       Part of Hermann had hoped that Newton had listened, for once in his life, and if not forgoing the ludicrous drift idea had at least summoned a supervising physician, but  _of fucking course_  he just slapped the damn thing onto his head the second he was left to his own devices.

       Now he’s shuddering and twitching as if he’s being electrocuted, which, in a way, he is. Hermann tears the helmet off him–the risks of abruptly ending a Drift are nothing compared to the risk of letting this continue. Newton’s spasms don’t stop even when he’s disconnected. If they do–if they ever do–will there be anything of Newton left at all?

       “Newton, look at me,  _look at me_.” Hermann lets Newton fall back into his chest, wrapping his arms around him as if this was just another meltdown or panic attack, the one problem Hermann was an adept enough Dom to solve. “Eyes on me, dear; get them out of the back of your head and pay attention  _this minute_ ,” like Newton’s getting overstimulated in a Red Lobster instead of trying to fight off a larger neural overload than any human has ever before experienced. 

       “Hnngh?” Newton’s vocal cords are slack, and the noise might not mean anything at all, but he’s been so eerily silent till now that Hermann decides that this is a good sign.

       “Yes, it’s me, now be a good boy and stop shaking.” Hermann is about a centimeter from cracking completely. “Deep breaths, now. Deep breaths. I need eye contact; you can do that, can’t you?”

       “hhhHhhrrrm’n?”

       “Yes, I’m here. Look at me. Look at my face.” 

       “hhhhh…” Newton’s strength seems to leave him, but the shuddering has become more like trembling and less like seizing.

       “Deep breaths, deep, deep breaths. Now look at me.”

       Newton jerks his eyes into focus with a start. “Hhhhhmn, get…get…get…”

       “I’m not leaving until you’ve–”

       “Get Pentecost.”

**Author's Note:**

> Initially this was a tiny snippet of an AU that I didn't think I was going to elaborate on, and then [AnnetheCatDetective](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnnetheCatDetective/pseuds/AnnetheCatDetective) happened.
> 
> This AU flavor was created by [AgentMalkere](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AgentMalkere/pseuds/AgentMalkere); I'm just borrowing the car.


End file.
